Societe Generale’s head of corporate and investment banking is eyeing opportunities in infrastructure and natural resources, as the French bank strives to hit the ambitious growth targets set out for its financing and advisory unit last year.

The French bank released a road map last May plotting a route to delivering sustainable growth and profitability, in which it highlighted its financing and advisory business as one of the “main growth drivers”.

The bank pledged at the time to commit more resources to the unit in a bid to achieve 8% annual revenue growth by 2016.

Didier Valet, head of corporate and investment banking, private banking and securities services at Societe Generale, said: “The industry where we are active and where we expect growth is infrastructure, where we think that there is a lot of demand worldwide for these products.

“We have also reinvested in asset-based financing, in real estate mainly in Europe, in aircraft and shipping and in natural resources, which we continue to consider part of the backbone of our financing business.”

The French bank last year declared it had largely completed a wide-ranging transformation of its balance sheet to comply with new European regulation, and published an updated set of targets for 2014 to 2016.

Valet was speaking after the bank reported first-quarter results on Wednesday in which its global banking and investor solutions business, which houses trading, prime services, securities services, advisory, lending and underwriting - posted revenues of €2.6 billion, its best quarter for at least two years. Revenues climbed from €2.1 billion a year earlier, while net profits rose 21% from a year earlier to €522 million.

Within trading, equities had a strong quarter, with revenues surging 33% to €853m versus the first three months of 2014, culminating in the highest quarterly figure for at least two years. FICC posted revenues of €584m, slightly up from a year earlier, despite weaker revenues from structured products.

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Valet said: “Overall we continue to be positive in terms of the equity market. QE will continue to push investors to look into riskier assets and we continue to feel that equity markets particularly in Europe are less expensive than what you could find in the US, for example.”

Financing and advisory revenues rose 15% year-on-year to €522m, with net profits from those businesses up 42% to €112 million. Operating costs rose from €323 million in the first three months of 2014 to €367 million.

The bank said the year-on-year increase in revenues was driven by a solid quarter in natural resources – which posted higher revenues despite a decrease in activity due to a fall in the oil price – and its capital markets unit, housing acquisition financing, debt capital markets and leveraged finance.